X-Message-Number: 25501
From: 
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2005 10:55:30 EST
Subject: authenticity etc.

Mike Perry again says that a bunch of newly created duplicates would  share a 
past, and thus each would count as survival of the original if that  original 
had been destroyed at the same time. He also reminds us of the need to  be 
precise in language.
 
Mike rarely says anything clearly wrong, and the worst you can say  about his 
choices is that perhaps they aren't the most appropriate or useful. I  think 
there is relevance here in the following thought experiment, which I have  
mentioned before:
 
Consider a system which is very similar to you and your immediate  

environment--not as you are now, but as you might become after (say) a century,
given 
life extension. However, assume that this system appeared in the  remote past 
(and maybe another galaxy), not the present or future or  nearby. There are 
some obvious puzzles or contradictions:
 
This past "you" remembers your present and even your decades-ahead future,  
so in some sense you are its predecessor and it is (was?) your  continuer and 
survivor. Yet in another sense its "past" is not authentic, since  in the real 
past of its environment it did not exist. Also, you would doubtless  feel 
uncomfortable in staking your survival on something already long  gone. 
 
None of that proves anything much, except to reinforce the need for caution  
in making claims.
RBR insists on his own use of language, writing for example:
 
>A standing wave cannot exist, not now and not ever. 
>Therefore,  by your definition of 'I', I never exist. There is no 
>potential  existence because there is never *any* existence. 

This not only rejects ordinary use of language, but also rejects out of  hand 
the many possibilities currently envisaged about the nature of matter,  
space, and time, including unresolved questions of neoPlatonism. 
 
RBR also says the Schrodinger equation doesn't postulate anything, but is  
merely a model for the measurement process. This view is sometimes called  
"instrumentalism"--which means that a theory is only a means of making  

predictions, as opposed to being an "explanation" of a phenomenon. But many  
scientists 
and philosophers insist that instrumentalism is unsatisfactory, or in  vulgar 
language, chickenshit. A decent theory should not just predict, but  explain. 
After all, the Ptolemaic theory of the solar system was just as good in  

prediction as the Copernican--in fact better, for a while--and only fell down in

ontology. We cannot turn our backs on ontology--at least not without risk  of a
boot in the rear.  
 
RBR sometimes accuses others--perhaps in some cases correctly--of wishful  
thinking. But I think he is also partly guilty of this, the wish in his case  

being to reach a clear and definitive conclusion when the evidence is still far
from complete. 
 
Robert Ettinger


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